2005 칸영화제 경쟁부문 A Tale of Cinema means both a ′story of cinema′ and a ′story before a theatre′. An audience member, Dong-soo, watches a film by his school senior suffering from cancer. In the film, a high school student, Sang-won, meets his former girl friend, Young-shil and they have sex. Later, Sang-won tries to commit suicide but fails. Dong-soo meets Young-shil, an actress from the film and has a similar experience. With Hong′s flowing direction, this film is an exquisite and complicated story through an odd passage between film and reality. One of the most creative Korean film auteurs, Hong Sang-soo tries subtle technical changes. Giving up the strong cubic effects in the individual frames found in previous films, he disturbs the stability of the frame through extreme zoom-ins and zoom-outs. Astonishing is the fact that it achieves the vitality and the beauty of form in general in spite of this change. This is an unquestionable masterpiece of Hong Sang-soo.